Frankia Bacteria

[FV Fruit Freak]

Is there anyway to add Frankia Bacteria to your soil? If there is, how do you go about getting some?

[pineislander]

This reference lists several regional plants known to host Frankia. If you take soil samples from well established roots of these plants and introduce that to a suitable host you might succeed. Red Alder and Ceanothus are known west coast species, but there may be others. Be aware that artificially fertilized plants may not generally host the bacteria, and probably other practices detrimental to natural soil life will prevent their successful establishment.

http://www.arnoldia.arboretum.harvard.edu/pdf/articles/1995-55-4-a-nitrogen-fixation-the-story-of-the-frankia-symbiosis.pdf

This link shows the nodulation you would be looking for:
https://www.laspilitas.com/classes/Frankia.html

[FV Fruit Freak]

THANK YOU very much Pineislander 

[ManVFruit]

Native Myrica such as Myrica Califronia should be a good host that has it in soil; if well established.

[simon_grow]

I did some research and I believe we don’t even need it unless you plan on not fertilizing your tree.

Simon

[SouthBayHapaJoe]

Simon,

Can you share any links or resources to fertilizing Yang Mei instead of utilizing natural Frankia Bacteria?

[simon_grow]

I just did a bunch of google searches but it’ll take me too long to re find all the articles. The articles basically said that Frankia helps with specific nutrient uptake in poor soils. In soils that are non deficient, It is more difficult to establish Frankia.

In essence, if you do get some Frankia which is actually an actinomycetes, you may want to deprive your tree of specific nutrients.

Two members here have nice large trees with no signs of Frankia in the rhizosphere.

Simon

[simon_grow]

Just for clarification, if you can easily find Frankia, you might as well add it to your plants roots but it may not be worth the hassle. There may be other benefits that Frankia may offer and there may be other beneficial organisms as well.

Simon

[Guanabanus]

When a tree already has all that it needs, adding a symbiotic micro-organism is slightly worse than nothing, as the tree now has to feed glucose to the micro-organism.

[simon_grow]

Thanks for the additional details Har!

To expand on this a little further, in general, during the night time when photosynthesis is not occurring, plants with symbiotic relationships with mycorrhiza or other beneficial microbes send photosynthates to the roots to help feed the mycorrhiza. The mycorrhiza in turn may help supply specific nutrients back to the host plant.

When the host plant has all the nutrients it needs, the symbiotic relationship becomes more like a parasitic one. I’m not saying this is true for Frankia but definitely something to consider. I wonder if Frankia will pull Iron from Yangmei trees because one of the primary roles of Frankie’s association with Yangmei is to fix nitrogen. To fix Nitrogen, hemoglobin is involved and hemoglobin has Iron as a central molecule.

Simon

[FV Fruit Freak]

THANK YOU Simon, MVF, and Har! All this great information is much appreciated.

I have good soil, so based on the info and further research, I won’t be scouring the hillsides or coastlines looking for Frankia.

Thanks again for the detailed info guys!